Military Personnel Quotes

Nagumo was suddenly on his own. At this crucial time, the cost of his failure to learn the complicated factors that played into carrier operations suddenly exploded. Now, when every minute counted, it was too late to learn the complexities involved in loading different munitions on different types of planes on the hangar deck, too late to learn how the planes were organized and spotted on the flight decks, too late to learn the flight capabilities of his different types of planes, and far too late to know how to integrate all those factors into a fast-moving and efficient operation with the planes and ordnance available at that moment. Commander Genda, his brilliant operations officer, couldn’t make the decisions for him now. It was all up to Nagumo. At 0730 on June 4, 1942, years of shipbuilding, training, and strategic planning had all come to this moment. Teams of highly trained pilots, flight deck personnel, mechanics, and hundreds of other sailors were ready and awaiting his command. The entire course of the battle, of the Combined Fleet, and even perhaps of Japan were going to bear the results of his decisions, then and there.

I talked with the admiral’s staff. Military personnel are the worst, no disrespect intended. They clam up tighter than a bullfrog’s ass.

You know that when ex-military personnel start assassinating their own government's agents that something funky is going on.

I often wonder what their [military personnel and private security companies at jails] job is: to protect the people, the human beings inside, or to protect the place itself, the concept, the ideology

As a West Point graduate, Grant had enjoyed an insider’s knowledge of military personnel during the war, but as a Washington outsider, he needed the valuable advice of seasoned professionals about appointments.

First item in the crew roster is given name, so I'll input 'Skippy'. Second item is surname-" "The Magnificent." "Really?" "It is entirely appropriate, Joe." "Oh, uh huh, because that's what everyone calls you," I retorted sarcastically, rolling my eyes. Not wanting to argue with him, I typed in 'TheMagnificent'. "Next question is your rank, this file is designed for military personnel." "I'd like 'Grand Exalted Field Marshall El Supremo'." "Right, I'll type in 'Cub Scout'. Next question-" "Hey! You jerk-" "-is occupational specialty." "Oh, clearly that should be Lord God Controller of All Things." "I'll give you that one, that is spelled A, S, S, H, O, L, E. Next-" "Hey! You shithead, I should-" "Age?" I asked. "A couple million, at least. I think." "Mentally, you're a six year old, so that's what I typed in." "Joe, I just changed your rank in the personnel file to 'Big Poopyhead'." Skippy laughed. "Five year old. You're a five year old." "I guess that's fair," he admitted. "Sex? I'm going to select 'n/a' on that one for you," I said. "Joe, in your personnel file, I just updated Sex to 'Unlikely'." "This is not going well, Skippy." "You started it!" "That was mature. Four year old, then. Maybe Terrible Twos." "I give up," Skippy snorted. "Save the damned file and we'll call it even, Ok?" "No problem. We should do this more often, huh?" "Oh, shut up.

There is an uneasy moment most military personnel recognize, when they come too close to ‘the enemy’ and what was a homogeneous mass breaks apart, like cells pulling away under a microscope, revealing that all along it was made up of individual humans just like them.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look at thousands of working people displaced from their jobs with reduced incomes as a result of automation while the profits of the employers remain intact, and say: “This is not just.” It will look across the oceans and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing to prevent us from paying adequate wages to schoolteachers, social workers and other servants of the public to insure that we have the best available personnel in these positions which are charged with the responsibility of guiding our future generations. There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum—and livable—income for every American family. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from remolding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

In the United States the legacy of settler colonialism can be seen in the endless wars of aggression and occupations; the trillions spent on war machinery, military bases, and personnel instead of social services and quality public education; the gross profits of corporations, each of which has greater resources and funds than more than half the countries in the world yet pay minimal taxes and provide few jobs for US citizens; the repression of generation after generation of activists who seek to change the system; the incarceration of the poor, particularly descendants of enslaved Africans; the individualism, carefully inculcated, that on the one hand produces self-blame for personal failure and on the other exalts ruthless dog-eat-dog competition for possible success, even though it rarely results; and high rates of suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual violence against women and children, homelessness, dropping out of school, and gun violence.

Although the operators fought the battle and by all accounts saved about twenty American lives, because they were neither CIA staffers nor active military personnel they were deemed ineligible for even higher awards, awards that went to other men who played smaller roles and never fired a shot. As

The authors (Habsburg military personnel) invariably show some surprise when recounting a respectable performance of a regiment during its Italian period and are forced to admit, somewhat reluctantly, that the Italians were not such bad soldiers after all. [I think this quote is hilarious, especially when imagining Tommaso's reaction.]

The First World War, known at the time as “The Great War”, was a four-year conflict that spanned the globe––involving thirty-two countries in total. It was an unforeseen war that resulted from a series of calamities that broke the delicate arrangement of European powers, and ended with the loss of over eleven million military personnel and seven million civilians.

Three years earlier, when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq became public, Rush Limbaugh—the most popular radio broadcaster in the United States, whose syndicated radio show has, at last count, 13 million listeners—described the prisoners who had been killed, raped, tortured, and humiliated by or at the behest of U.S. military personnel, as less than human. “They are the ones who are sick,” fumed Limbaugh.

Any Earth Alliance military personnel who, whether through affirmative acts or by inaction, assist these seditionists are guilty of treason and will be held accountable. To all present military personnel: you have five minutes to respond accordingly.” She chuckled. “Bet more than one scuffle just broke out on board those ships.” “Any second thoughts?” Her head shook tersely. “We’re all traitors now.” “It’s not traitorous to want to be free.

There is more to military units than hardware. There is the character of the unit’s personnel: their strengths, experience, and knowledge, their ability to get along and work together amid the horrors of the battlefield. There is an almost undefinable quality. That quality is the Marine Corps’ secret weapon. Their edge. That quality is their ethos.

According to a recent study of military personnel conducted through the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, introverts function better than extroverts when sleep deprived, which is a cortically de-arousing condition (because losing sleep makes us less alert, active, and energetic).

From 2002 to 2008, the United States was fighting bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; among active military personnel, there were an average 1,643 fatalities per year. But over the same stretch of time in the early 1980s, with the United States fighting no major wars, there were more than 2,100 military deaths per year. How can this possibly be? For one, the military used to be much larger: 2.1 million on active duty in 1988 versus 1.4 million in 2008. But even the rate of death in 2008 was lower than in certain peacetime years. Some of this improvement is likely due to better medical care. But a surprising fact is that the accidental death rate for soldiers in the early 1980s was higher than the death rate by hostile fire for every year the United States has been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. It seems that practicing to fight a war can be just about as dangerous as really fighting one. And,

My indirect exposure to war for most of my life constantly pushed me toward seeking, and becoming comfortable with, a pro-peace philosophy, as well as refusing to be intimidated by the false charges that such a position is unpatriotic, un-American, and expresses a lack of concern for military personnel.

Forget bringing the troops home from Iraq. We need to get the troops home from World War II. Can anybody tell me why, in 2009, we still have more than sixty thousand troops in Germany and thirty thousand in Japan? At some point, these people are going to have to learn to rape themselves. Our soldiers have been in Germany so long they now wear shorts with black socks. You know that crazy soldier hiding in the cave on Iwo Jima who doesn’t know the war is over? That’s us. Bush and Cheney used to love to keep Americans all sphinctered-up on the notion that terrorists might follow us home. But actually, we’re the people who go to your home and then never leave. Here’s the facts: The Republic of America has more than five hundred thousand military personnel deployed on more than seven hundred bases, with troops in one hundred fifty countries—we’re like McDonald’s with tanks—including thirty-seven European countries—because you never know when Portugal might invade Euro Disney. And this doesn’t even count our secret torture prisons, which are all over the place, but you never really see them until someone brings you there—kinda like IHOP. Of course, Americans would never stand for this in reverse—we can barely stand letting Mexicans in to do the landscaping. Can you imagine if there were twenty thousand armed Guatemalans on a base in San Ber-nardino right now? Lou Dobbs would become a suicide bomber. And why? How did this country get stuck with an empire? I’m not saying we’re Rome. Rome had good infrastructure. But we are an empire, and the reason is because once America lands in a country, there is no exit strategy. We’re like cellulite, herpes, and Irish relatives: We are not going anywhere. We love you long time!

She wasn't entirely sure if she was being rescued or kidnapped.

According to the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation statement, approximately 10,000 American military women were stationed in Vietnam during the war. Most were nurses in the Army, Air Force, and Navy, but women also served as physicians and medical personnel, and in air traffic control and military intelligence. Civilian women also served in Vietnam as news correspondents and workers for the Red Cross, Donut Dollies, the USO, Special Services, the American Friends Service Committee, Catholic Relief Services, and other humanitarian organizations.

Stillness is expected at every cemetery. It’s appropriate for several reasons, not the least of which is the peacefulness the deceased finally have earned. The stillness at a military cemetery is all the more moving, given the contrast between the utter silence there and the din of battle that no doubt attended the deaths of many of the 5,329 American military personnel buried at Ardennes.

Deploying LOGCAP or other contractors instead of military personnel can alleviate the political and social pressures that have come to be a fact of life in the U.S. whenever military forces are deployed,” wrote Lt. Col. Steven Woods in his Army War College study about the effects of LOGCAP. “While there has been little to no public reaction to the deaths of five DynCorp employees killed in Latin America or the two American support contractors from Tapestry Solutions attacked (and one killed) in Kuwait … U.S. forces had to be withdrawn from Somalia after public outcry following the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu.… “Additionally, military force structure often has a force cap, usually for political reasons. Force caps impose a ceiling on the number of soldiers that can be deployed into a defined area. Contractors expand this limit.

...the consequences of this shift of emphasis from the police to the military in the power game were of great consequence. It is true, ascendancy of the secret police over the military apparatus is the hallmark of many tyrannies, and not only the totalitarian; however, in the case of totalitarian government the preponderance of the police not merely answers the need for suppressing the population at home but fits the ideological claim to global rule. For it is evident that those who regard the whole earth as their future territory will stress the organ of domestic violence and will rule conquered territory with police methods and personnel rather than with the army. Thus, the Nazis used their SS troops, essentially a police force, for the rule and even the conquest of foreign territories, with the ultimate aim of an amalgamation of the army and the police under the leadership of the SS.

Adam Lashinsky explained how Amazon. com had gone on a “military hiring spree” because Jeff was impressed with veterans’ logistical know-how and bias for action.3 In fact, Amazon.com has a dedicated military recruiting website and a highly consistent hiring and retention record for ex-military personnel. This practice of hiring veterans isn’t about expressing gratitude for ex-soldiers’ service to our country. Veterans fit Jeff’s business model. As a result, Amazon.com has not bothered to launch a huge PR campaign about its military employment program. Jeff just realized it was good business.

Official USSR Government figures state that 30 men and one female security guard died as a direct consequence of the accident. That list only covers the people at the site within the first few hours of the explosion who died from acute radiation syndrome or burns. It ignores all military personnel who died due to exposure from the clean-up operation, civilians living in the surrounding area, and many others who entered the Zone shortly after the accident (journalists, doctors etc). Those whose bodies were recovered are buried in welded zinc coffins, to prevent their radioactive remains from contaminating the soil.

We will revisit the effects of sleep loss on emotional stability and other brain functions in later chapters when we discuss the real-life consequences of sleep loss in society, education, and the workplace. The findings justify our questioning of whether or not sleep-deprived doctors can make emotionally rational decisions and judgments; under-slept military personnel should have their fingers on the triggers of weaponry; overworked bankers and stock traders can make rational, non-risky financial decisions when investing the public’s hard-earned retirement funds; and if teenagers should be battling against impossibly early start times during a developmental phase of life when they are most vulnerable to developing psychiatric disorders.

Furthermore, Hitler has been so kind as to announce to his loyal, devoted people that as of today all military personnel are under orders of the Gestapo, and that any soldier who knows that one of his superiors was involved in this cowardly attempt on the Fuhrer's life may shoot him on sight! A fine kettle of fish that will be. Little Johnny's feet are sore after a long march and his commanding officer bawls him out. Johnny grabs his rifle, shouts, "You, you tried to kill the Fuhrer. Take that!" One shot, and the snooty officer who dared to reprimand him passes into eternal life (or is it eternal death?). Eventually, every time an officer sees a soldier or gives an order, he'll be practically wetting his pants, because the soldiers have more say-so than he does.

As the nation has learned time and again, it is American military preparedness and superiority, in combination with a proactive and prudent foreign policy, that are likely to serve as a deterrent to military conflict and prevent large-scale, long-lasting wars. Should war occur—and at times war is unavoidable—the United States must ensure that its young service personnel are the best trained and equipped on the face of the earth.

The most insidious of our country, the greediest and highest rung of our socioeconomic ladder, line their pockets with misappropriated funds as military personnel and hordes of civilians are maimed or killed. It’s not their children out there, blinded by manufactured patriotism or lured into the service with the promise of economic stability, all with the sanctimonious blessings of misguided public consent by way of corporate, state-sponsored media. It won’t be their children who are terrorized by Wahabbist insurgents tearing through city blocks and rural areas as only an ever-devouring plague could. It won’t be any of their loved ones watching thousands of years of civilization unraveling like an old sweater as each thread of wool is lit on fire or stolen to sell on the black market for greedy consumers with a fetish for hijacked Mesopotamian artifacts.

Once the immediate danger of the reactor fire was over, work began on a gargantuan operation to clean up radioactive dust and debris across the newly established 30km exclusion zone - particularly around Chernobyl itself - and to design and construct a gigantic cover over Unit 4 to isolate it from the surrounding environment. Military and civilian personnel throughout the Soviet Union were drafted in for the operation, where they became known as Liquidators - liquidating the disaster’s effects. According to the World Health Organisation, some 240,000 men and women working within the 30km Exclusion Zone were recognised as Liquidators between 1986 and ‘87. The clean-up operation continued on a relatively large scale until 1990, by which time around 600,000 civilian and military personnel had received special certificates confirming their status as Liquidators.215

Israel was able to exploit the deep division among Palestinians and Gaza’s isolation to launch three savage air and ground assaults on the strip that began in 2008 and continued in 2012 and 2014, leaving large swaths of its cities and refugee camps in rubble and struggling with rolling blackouts and contaminated water.26 Some neighborhoods, such as Shuja‘iyya and parts of Rafah, suffered extraordinary levels of destruction. The casualty figures tell only part of the story, although they are revealing. In these three major attacks, 3,804 Palestinians were killed, of them almost one thousand minors. A total of 87 Israelis were killed, the majority of them military personnel engaged in these offensive operations. The lopsided 43:1 scale of these casualties is telling, as is the fact that the bulk of the Israelis killed were soldiers while most of the Palestinians were civilians.

Hispanics are half as likely to enlist in the military as either whites or blacks. The recruit-to-population ratio for whites is 1.06. For blacks it is 1.08. For Hispanics, it’s only 0.65. The media not only neglect to highlight this particular underrepresentation, they lie about it. An article published by the Population Reference Bureau—subsidized by taxpayers—is titled: “Latinos Claim Larger Share of U.S. Military Personnel.” To the untrained eye, this would seem to be saying that Latinos claim a larger share of U.S. military personnel. In fact, however, by “larger share,” the headline means “larger” compared with the past—not compared with other groups. The actual article admits that Hispanics constitute less than 12 percent of all enlistees, compared with 16 percent of the civilian workforce. Moreover, despite their machismo culture, a majority of Hispanic troops are women.15

The same grant programs that paid for local law enforcement agencies across the country to buy armored personnel carriers and drones have paid for Stingrays," said the ALCU's Soghoian. "Like drones, license plate readers, and biometric scanners, the Stingrays are yet another surveillance technology created by defense contractors for the military, and after years of use in war zones, it eventually trickles down to local and state agencies, paid for with DOJ and DHS money.

I can hardly believe that our nation’s policy is to seek peace by going to war. It seems that President Donald J. Trump has done everything in his power to divert our attention away from the fact that the FBI is investigating his association with Russia during his campaign for office. For several weeks now he has been sabre rattling and taking an extremely controversial stance, first with Syria and Afghanistan and now with North Korea. The rhetoric has been the same, accusing others for our failed policy and threatening to take autonomous military action to attain peace in our time. This gunboat diplomacy is wrong. There is no doubt that Secretaries Kelly, Mattis, and other retired military personnel in the Trump Administration are personally tough. However, most people who have served in the military are not eager to send our young men and women to fight, if it is not necessary. Despite what may have been said to the contrary, our military leaders, active or retired, are most often the ones most respectful of international law. Although the military is the tip of the spear for our country, and the forces of civilization, it should not be the first tool to be used. Bloodshed should only be considered as a last resort and definitely never used as the first option. As the leader of the free world, we should stand our ground but be prepared to seek peace through restraint. This is not the time to exercise false pride! Unfortunately the Trump administration informed four top State Department management officials that their services were no longer needed as part of an effort to "clean house." Patrick Kennedy, served for nine years as the “Undersecretary for Management,” “Assistant Secretaries for Administration and Consular Affairs” Joyce Anne Barr and Michele Bond, as well as “Ambassador” Gentry Smith, director of the Office for Foreign Missions. Most of the United States Ambassadors to foreign countries have also been dismissed, including the ones to South Korea and Japan. This leaves the United States without the means of exercising diplomacy rapidly, when needed. These positions are political appointments, and require the President’s nomination and the Senate’s confirmation. This has not happened! Moreover, diplomatically our country is severely handicapped at a time when tensions are as hot as any time since the Cold War. Without following expert advice or consent and the necessary input from the Unites States Congress, the decisions are all being made by a man who claims to know more than the generals do, yet he has only the military experience of a cadet at “New York Military Academy.” A private school he attended as a high school student, from 1959 to 1964. At that time, he received educational and medical deferments from the Vietnam War draft. Trump said that the school provided him with “more training than a lot of the guys that go into the military.” His counterpart the unhinged Kim Jong-un has played with what he considers his country’s military toys, since April 11th of 2012. To think that these are the two world leaders, protecting the planet from a nuclear holocaust….

It seems like it might go on for a while, so Tausolo takes a seat and looks around the sergeant's cubicle. There's not much to see, since the guy just arrived at the WTB, only a blank form tacked to a wall that looks like every other army form in the world. "Hurt Feelings Report," it is titled. "Whiner's name," it says under that. "Which ear were the words of hurtfulness spoken into?" it says under that. "Is there permanent feeling damage?" "Did you require a 'tissue' for tears?" "Has this resulted in a traumatic brain injury?" "Reason for filing this report," it says under that. "Mark all that apply." "I am a wimp." "I am a crybaby." "I want my mommy." "I was told that I am not a hero." "Narrative," it says under that. "Tell us in your own sissy words how your feelings were hurt." Finally at the bottom of the form: We, as the Army, take hurt feelings seriously. If you don't have someone who can give you a hug and make things all better, please let us know and we will promptly dispatch a "hugger" to you ASAP. In the event we are unable to find a "hugger" we will notify the fire department and request that they send fire personnel to your location. If you are in need of supplemental support, upon written request, we will make every reasonable effort to provide you with a "blankey," a "binky" and/or a bottle if you so desire.

During his first week on the job, McNamara sat down with the Pentagon’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG), which had just completed an intensive study, known as WSEG Report #50, that found that a Soviet surprise attack on only five locations—the White House, the Pentagon, Camp David, Raven Rock, and Mount Weather—would likely destroy all of the nation’s command structure. Even simply hitting the first two would likely wipe out the military command structure, since Raven Rock and Mount Weather weren’t normally manned with senior personnel. “Both the Presidential and the SecDef-JCS levels of command are presently subject to operational incapacitation by the same events,” the report explained. Hitting all the nation’s major military commands and leadership sites would involve attacking just fourteen installations—a

It is no surprise that, on the whole, professors lean left. So do artists, poets, and people who love to watch foreign movies. One of the strongest personality correlates of left-wing politics is the trait of openness to experience, a trait that describes people who crave new ideas and experiences and who tend to be interested in changing traditional arrangements.40 On the other hand, members of the military, law enforcement personnel, and students who have well-organized dorm rooms tend to lean right. (Seriously. You can guess people’s political leanings at better-than-chance levels just from photographs of their desks.)41 Social conservatives tend to be lower on openness to experience and higher on conscientiousness—they prefer things to be orderly and predictable, they are more likely to show up on time for meetings, and they are more likely to see the value of traditional arrangements.

To the north, Winston Churchill was warning that Hitler wanted to take over the world. The new British prime minister had been saying it for years. No one had listened. Now der Führer was on the march, and France was not ready. Not the people. Not the politicians. Not the press. Not even the generals. In Paris, they said the Germans would never dare to invade France. They said the Nazis could never penetrate the Maginot Line, the twenty-five-kilometer-thick virtual wall of heavily armed and manned guard posts and bunkers and concrete tank barricades and antiaircraft batteries and minefields and all manner of other military fortifications designed to keep the Germans at bay. They’d convinced themselves Hitler would never try to move his panzer divisions through the forests of the Ardennes. Those forests were too thick, too dense, too foreboding for anyone to move tanks and mobile artillery and armored personnel carriers and other mechanized units through.

Afterward, when Trump had phone calls with the families of others from the military who had been killed, the White House staff noticed how hard and tough it seemed for him. “He’s not that guy,” Bannon said. “He’s never really been around the military. He’s never been around military family. Never been around death.” The deaths of “parents of small kids” struck him particularly hard. “That had a big impact on him, and it’s seen throughout everything.” A staffer who sat in on several calls that Trump made to Gold Star families was struck with how much time and emotional energy Trump devoted to them. He had a copy of material from the deceased service member’s personnel file. “I’m looking at his picture—such a beautiful boy,” Trump said in one call to family members. Where did he grow up? Where did he go to school? Why did he join the service? “I’ve got the record here,” Trump said. “There are reports here that say how much he was loved. He was a great leader.” Some in the Oval Office had copies of the service records. None of what Trump cited was there. He was just making it up. He knew what the families wanted to hear.

The word “collect” has a very special definition, according to the Department of Defense. It doesn’t mean collect; it means that a person looks at, or analyzes, the data. In 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper likened the NSA’s trove of accumulated data to a library. All those books are stored on the shelves, but very few are actually read. “So the task for us in the interest of preserving security and preserving civil liberties and privacy is to be as precise as we possibly can be when we go in that library and look for the books that we need to open up and actually read.” Think of that friend of yours who has thousands of books in his house. According to this ridiculous definition, the only books he can claim to have collected are the ones he’s read. This is why Clapper asserts he didn’t lie in a Senate hearing when he replied “no” to the question “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” From the military’s perspective, it’s not surveillance until a human being looks at the data, even if algorithms developed and implemented by defense personnel or contractors have analyzed it many times over.

The Russian goal was to quickly harness the power of personal access that social media gives and craft metanarratives and distribute in such a way that the enemy population can be turned against their own government. Opinion polls, news coverage, and street talk can be shifted by changing the perception of the populace. Social media not only weaponizes opinion, it gives the attacker the ability to act as puppeteer for an entire foreign nation. Two Russian information warfare officers wrote a treatise describing the combat effects of weaponized news and social media: “The mass media today can stir up chaos and confusion in government and military management of any country and instill ideas of violence, treachery, and immorality, and demoralize the public. Put through this treatment, the armed forces personnel and public of any country will not be ready for active defense.”1 Additionally, the Russians make no distinction between using these activities in wartime and “peace.” The Russian Federation will deploy information warfare and propaganda persistently in a constant effort to keep adversaries off balance. When it comes to information warfare, such distinctions of peacetime and wartime fade away.

The war against ISIS in Iraq was a long, hard slog, and for a time the administration was as guilty of hyping progress as the most imaginative briefers at the old “Five O’Clock Follies” in Saigon had been. In May 2015, an ISIS assault on Ramadi and a sandstorm that grounded U.S. planes sent Iraqi forces and U.S. Special Forces embedded with them fleeing the city. Thanks to growing hostility between the Iraqi government and Iranian-supported militias in the battle, the city wouldn’t be taken until the end of the year. Before it was over we had sent well over five thousand military personnel back to Iraq, including Special Forces operators embedded as advisors with Iraqi and Kurdish units. A Navy SEAL, a native Arizonan whom I had known when he was a boy, was killed in northern Iraq. His name was Charles Keating IV, the grandson of my old benefactor, with whom I had been implicated all those years ago in the scandal his name had branded. He was by all accounts a brave and fine man, and I mourned his loss. Special Forces operators were on the front lines when the liberation of Mosul began in October 2016. At immense cost, Mosul was mostly cleared of ISIS fighters by the end of July 2017, though sporadic fighting continued for months. The city was in ruins, and the traumatized civilian population was desolate. By December ISIS had been defeated everywhere in Iraq. I believe that had U.S. forces retained a modest but effective presence in Iraq after 2011 many of these tragic events might have been avoided or mitigated. Would ISIS nihilists unleashed in the fury and slaughter of the Syrian civil war have extended their dystopian caliphate to Iraq had ten thousand or more Americans been in country? Probably, but with American advisors and airpower already on the scene and embedded with Iraqi security forces, I think their advance would have been blunted before they had seized so much territory and subjected millions to the nightmare of ISIS rule. Would Maliki have concentrated so much power and alienated Sunnis so badly that the insurgency would catch fire again? Would Iran’s influence have been as detrimental as it was? Would Iraqis have collaborated to prevent a full-scale civil war from erupting? No one can answer for certain. But I believe that our presence there would have had positive effects. All we can say for certain is that Iraq still has a difficult road to walk, but another opportunity to progress toward that hopeful vision of a democratic, independent nation that’s learned to accommodate its sectarian differences, which generations of Iraqis have suffered without and hundreds of thousands of Americans risked everything for.

He’s threatening the President of the United States if we take you into custody?” Creek asked, his thoughts apparently in order. “Actually, it would be more like a declaration of war on the US government, if you abduct me.” “He thinks he can take on the entire US military?” Creek asked, incredulous. “General, he’s a lot more powerful than I thought.  He’s way beyond demigod status, more like elder god.  He can appear anywhere, anytime. His claws cut through anything. Who knows what else he can do!” Roma said, looking at me for additional information. I shrugged.  Hell, I didn’t know what he could do.  Elder god? “Christian, you could have avoided capture or escaped, right?” Tanya asked. “Yeah,” I said. “Okwari knows this?” she asked. “Yeah, but see, here’s the thing.  He spent a thousand years as a slave in Hell.  I set him free.  His math is pretty simple.” It was quiet for a moment, except for the personnel trying to clean up the lobby.  “Major Deckert, how are you hooked up in all this?” the general asked, obviously acquainted with the security chief. “I work for Ms. Demidova, General,” he said, rocking back on his heels, hands clasped behind his back.  “For what it’s worth, General, in my opinion, I wouldn’t touch Gordon here with a four-mile pole.” “You think that monster could really fight the government?” Creek asked. “Hell, Sir, I was talking about my employer.” He waved in Tanya’s direction. “I didn’t even know that thing existed.  But nothing surprises me with Gordon around.” I gave him my best glare, but it just bounced right off.

In the wake of the Cognitive Revolution, gossip helped Homo sapiens to form larger and more stable bands. But even gossip has its limits. Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings. Even today, a critical threshold in human organisations falls somewhere around this magic number. Below this threshold, communities, businesses, social networks and military units can maintain themselves based mainly on intimate acquaintance and rumour-mongering. There is no need for formal ranks, titles and law books to keep order. 3A platoon of thirty soldiers or even a company of a hundred soldiers can function well on the basis of intimate relations, with a minimum of formal discipline. A well-respected sergeant can become ‘king of the company’ and exercise authority even over commissioned officers. A small family business can survive and flourish without a board of directors, a CEO or an accounting department. But once the threshold of 150 individuals is crossed, things can no longer work that way. You cannot run a division with thousands of soldiers the same way you run a platoon. Successful family businesses usually face a crisis when they grow larger and hire more personnel. If they cannot reinvent themselves, they go bust. How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths. Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins. States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag. Judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights – and the money paid out in fees.

Although some scientists questioned the validity of these studies, others went along willingly. People from a wide range of disciplines were recruited, including psychics, physicists, and computer scientists, to investigate a variety of unorthodox projects: experimenting with mind-altering drugs such as LSD, asking psychics to locate the position of Soviet submarines patrolling the deep oceans, etc. In one sad incident, a U.S. Army scientist was secretly given LSD. According to some reports, he became so violently disoriented that he committed suicide by jumping out a window. Most of these experiments were justified on the grounds that the Soviets were already ahead of us in terms of mind control. The U.S. Senate was briefed in another secret report that the Soviets were experimenting with beaming microwave radiation directly into the brains of test subjects. Rather than denouncing the act, the United States saw “great potential for development into a system for disorienting or disrupting the behavior pattern of military or diplomatic personnel.” The U.S. Army even claimed that it might be able to beam entire words and speeches into the minds of the enemy: “One decoy and deception concept … is to remotely create noise in the heads of personnel by exposing them to low power, pulsed microwaves.… By proper choice of pulse characteristics, intelligible speech may be created.… Thus, it may be possible to ‘talk’ to selected adversaries in a fashion that would be most disturbing to them,” the report said. Unfortunately, none of these experiments was peer-reviewed, so millions of taxpayer dollars were spent on projects like this one, which most likely violated the laws of physics, since the human brain cannot receive microwave radiation and, more important, does not have the ability to decode microwave messages. Dr. Steve Rose, a biologist at the Open University, has called this far-fetched scheme a “neuro-scientific impossibility.” But for all the millions of dollars spent on these “black projects,” apparently not a single piece of reliable science emerged. The use of mind-altering drugs did, in fact, create disorientation and even panic among the subjects who were tested, but the Pentagon failed to accomplish the key goal: control of the conscious mind of another person. Also, according to psychologist Robert Jay Lifton, brainwashing by the communists had little long-term effect. Most of the American troops who denounced the United States during the Korean War reverted back to their normal personalities soon after being released. In addition, studies done on people who have been brainwashed by certain cults also show that they revert back to their normal personality after leaving the cult. So it seems that, in the long run, one’s basic personality is not affected by brainwashing.

Two kinds of development help explain how a readiness built up to kill all Jews, including women and children. One is a series of “dress rehearsals” that served to lower inhibitions and provided trained personnel hardened for anything. First came the euthanasia of incurably ill and insane Germans, begun on the day when World War II began. Nazi eugenics theory had long provided a racial justification for getting rid of “inferior” persons. War provided a broader justification for reducing the drain of “useless mouths” on scarce resources. The “T-4” program killed more than seventy thousand people between September 1939 and 1941, when, in response to protests from the victims’ families and Catholic clergy, the matter was left to local authorities. Some of the experts trained in this program were subsequently transferred to the occupied east, where they applied their mass killing techniques to Jews. This time, there was less opposition. The second “dress rehearsal” was the work of the Einsatzgruppen, the intervention squads specially charged with executing the political and cultural elite of invaded countries. In the Polish campaign of September 1939 they helped wipe out the Polish intelligentsia and high civil service, evoking some opposition within the military command. In the Soviet campaign the Einsatzgruppen received the notorious “Commissar Order” to kill all Communist Party cadres as well as the Jewish leadership (seen as identical in Nazi eyes), along with Gypsies. This time the army raised no objections. The Einsatzgruppen subsequently played a major role, though they were far from alone, in the mass killings of Jewish women and children that began in some occupied areas in fall 1941. A third “dress rehearsal” was the intentional death of millions of Soviet prisoners of war. It was on six hundred of them that the Nazi occupation authorities first tested the mass killing potential of the commercial insecticide Zyklon-B at Auschwitz on September 3, 1941. Most Soviet prisoners of war, however, were simply worked or starved to death. The second category of developments that helped prepare a “willingness to murder” consisted of blockages, emergencies, and crises that made the Jews become a seemingly unbearable burden to the administrators of conquered territories. A major blockage was the failure to capture Moscow that choked off the anticipated expulsion of all the Jews of conquered eastern Europe far into the Soviet interior. A major emergency was shortages of food supplies for the German invasion force. German military planners had chosen to feed the invasion force with the resources of the invaded areas, in full knowledge that this meant starvation for local populations. When local supplies fell below expectations, the search for “useless mouths” began. In the twisted mentality of the Nazi administrators, Jews and Gypsies also posed a security threat to German forces. Another emergency was created by the arrival of trainloads of ethnic Germans awaiting resettlement, for whom space had to be made available. Faced with these accumulating problems, Nazi administrators developed a series of “intermediary solutions.” One was ghettos, but these proved to be incubators for disease (an obsession with the cleanly Nazis), and a drain on the budget. The attempt to make the ghettos work for German war production yielded little except another category of useless mouths: those incapable of work. Another “intermediary solution” was the stillborn plan, already mentioned, to settle European Jews en masse in some remote area such as Madagascar, East Africa, or the Russian hinterland. The failure of all the “intermediary solutions” helped open the way for a “final solution”: extermination.

We’re a clandestine network of scientists, military personnel, and a handful of people in senior government. But unlike the Illuminati, we didn’t come together for sinister purposes — far from it. We have a common and single goal: to try to fight the Styx any way we can.

...the Food Bank also serves 28,000 low-income military personnel and their dependents every month.

At home, the administration consulted with “experts” it has refused to identify in purging information about Islamic supremacism—the ideology that drives our enemies—from materials used to train law enforcement, intelligence, and military personnel responsible for our security. The obsession with bleaching the Islam out of Islamic terrorism reached mind-boggling lengths with the administration’s refusal to brand the Fort Hood massacre—in which thirteen Americans, mostly military personnel, were killed and dozens more wounded—as an act of terrorism.

the military started the campaigns by turning off the personnel system

I am Doug Hammer, U.S. Army Green Beret, retired. I served my country in two wars, in combat and received the Purple Heart for my war wounds. Until recently, I was willing to put up with my country imprisoning conservatives who did not agree with the President. I was willing to accept the imprisoning of pastors and others who were not favored by the White House. My thought was that America elected the President, so we get what we deserve. However, I have concluded that the President is not legitimately in office, that he has the worst interests of the country at heart and that he is attempting to destroy the capitalistic system and install a socialist, even Communist, system in its place. I finally concluded that rumors of Russian troops, stationed at this base, being used to execute Americans were true. Our band of veterans, which we have named the American Resistance, has taken out those foreign troops. We take full responsibility for doing so. We are now in control of Fort Carson, along with the command structure of the active duty troops stationed at this base. We call on all American military personnel, wherever located in the world, to join with us in resisting this illegitimate administration, rebuking them and removing them from office, by force of arms, if necessary. May God bless America.

Tracked Vehicles "Each war proves anew to those who may have had their doubts, the primacy of the main battle tank. Between wars, the tank is always a target for cuts. But in wartime, everyone remembers why we need it, in its most advanced, upgraded versions and in militarily significant numbers." - IDF Brigadier General Yahuda Admon (retired) Since their first appearance in the latter part of World War I, tanks have increasingly dominated military thinking. Armies became progressively more mechanised during World War II, with many infantry being carried in armoured carriers by the end of the war. The armoured personnel carrier (APC) evolved into the infantry fighting vehicle (IFV), which is able to support the infantry as well as simply transport them. Modern IFVs have a similar level of battlefield mobility to the tanks, allowing tanks and infantry to operate together and provide mutual support. Abrams Mission Provide heavy armour superiority on the battlefield. Entered Army Service 1980 Description and Specifications The Abrams tank closes with and destroys enemy forces on the integrated battlefield using mobility, firepower, and shock effect. There are three variants in service: M1A1, M1A2 and M1A2 SEP. The 120mm main gun, combined with the powerful 1,500 HP turbine engine and special armour, make the Abrams tank particularly suitable for attacking or defending against large concentrations of heavy armour forces on a highly lethal battlefield. Features of the M1A1 modernisation program include increased armour protection; suspension improvements; and an improved nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) protection system that increases survivability in a contaminated environment. The M1A1D modification consists of an M1A1 with integrated computer and a far-target-designation capability. The M1A2 modernisation program includes a commander's independent thermal viewer, an improved commander's weapon station, position navigation equipment, a distributed data and power architecture, an embedded diagnostic system and improved fire control systems.

M113 Family of Vehicles Mission Provide a highly mobile, survivable, and reliable tracked-vehicle platform that is able to keep pace with Abrams- and Bradley-equipped units and that is adaptable to a wide range of current and future battlefield tasks through the integration of specialised mission modules at minimum operational and support cost. Entered Army Service 1960 Description and Specifications After more than four decades, the M113 family of vehicles (FOV) is still in service in the U.S. Army (and in many foreign armies). The original M113 Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) helped to revolutionise mobile military operations. These vehicles carried 11 soldiers plus a driver and track commander under armour protection across hostile battlefield environments. More importantly, these vehicles were air transportable, air-droppable, and swimmable, allowing planners to incorporate APCs in a much wider range of combat situations, including many "rapid deployment" scenarios. The M113s were so successful that they were quickly identified as the foundation for a family of vehicles. Early derivatives included both command post (M577) and mortar carrier (M106) configurations. Over the years, the M113 FOV has undergone numerous upgrades. In 1964, the M113A1 package replaced the original gasoline engine with a 212 horsepower diesel package, significantly improving survivability by eliminating the possibility of catastrophic loss from fuel tank explosions. Several new derivatives were produced, some based on the armoured M113 chassis (e.g., the M125A1 mortar carrier and M741 "Vulcan" air defence vehicle) and some based on the unarmoured version of the chassis (e.g., the M548 cargo carrier, M667 "Lance" missile carrier, and M730 "Chaparral" missile carrier). In 1979, the A2 package of suspension and cooling enhancements was introduced. Today's M113 fleet includes a mix of these A2 variants, together with other derivatives equipped with the most recent A3 RISE (Reliability Improvements for Selected Equipment) package. The standard RISE package includes an upgraded propulsion system (turbocharged engine and new transmission), greatly improved driver controls (new power brakes and conventional steering controls), external fuel tanks, and 200-amp alternator with four batteries. Additional A3 improvements include incorporation of spall liners and provisions for mounting external armour. The future M113A3 fleet will include a number of vehicles that will have high speed digital networks and data transfer systems. The M113A3 digitisation program includes applying hardware, software, and installation kits and hosting them in the M113 FOV. Current variants: Mechanised Smoke Obscurant System M548A1/A3 Cargo Carrier M577A2/A3 Command Post Carrier M901A1 Improved TOW Vehicle M981 Fire Support Team Vehicle M1059/A3 Smoke Generator Carrier M1064/A3 Mortar Carrier M1068/A3 Standard Integrated Command Post System Carrier OPFOR Surrogate Vehicle (OSV) Manufacturer Anniston Army Depot (Anniston, AL) United Defense, L.P. (Anniston, AL)

report estimates that there are about 10,000 active and retired Pakistani military personnel currently in Bahrain (Husain 2011).

the fall of 1944. I went back to the university; I received the scholarship, to which I was entitled for earning top grades and I tutored some Russian students in English. However, life was joyless, food was scarce and whatever was available was intolerable. By the end of September, after Rosh Hashannah, Father got sick with pneumonia. Since he suffered all his life with asthma, pneumonia was a dangerous disease. Penicillin was a new drug in the West, unavailable in the Soviet Union. There was sulfa but only for people with special privileges like party members or military personnel. We were neither.

The agency was only a few years old, but tremendous resources had been poured into this facility and another massive building in St. Louis. The organization received $5 billion a year in federal funds, and employed thousands of personnel, both military and civilian.

While, perhaps somewhat surprising, experience shows that up to 90 percent of successful performance is attributed to psychological skills. Rarely is that number reported to be less than 40 percent. This comes from talking with military personnel, police officers, including SWAT Tactical Team members, and other emergency responders who engage in life and death situations.

A profession that I was once proud to serve in has become a militarized police state. Officers are quicker to draw their guns and use their tanks than to communicate with people to defuse a situation. They love to use their toys, and when they do, people die. The days of the peace officer are long gone, replaced by the militarized police warrior wearing uniforms making them indistinguishable from military personnel.

only a small minority of military personnel have combat-related jobs. In 2015, even after two lengthy wars, the percentage of military personnel in combat specialties was only 14 percent overall—with substantial differences between the services: for instance, 28 percent of enlisted Army personnel serve in jobs that are classified as combat positions compared to just 3 percent of Navy enlisted personnel. To be sure, many military personnel in noncombat positions end up in combat [zones] anyway. . . . But even when deployed in combat zones, most members of the military never end up fighting.

His posturing for independence came to its logical climax when in 1966 he ordered all foreign troops out of France, arguing that in the event of war, he would not let French soldiers bow to American command as they had been forced to do in World War Two. The way de Gaulle announced his new policy has gone down in history. Apparently the Général phoned the American President, Lyndon Johnson, to tell him that France was opting out of NATO, and that consequently all American military personnel had to be removed from French soil. Taking part in the conference call was Dean Rusk, the US Secretary of State, and Johnson told Rusk to reply: ‘Does that include those buried in it?

every time a bomb exploded, every anti-personnel weapon that sent its hundreds of particles tearing through the sift tissues of soft bodies, every helicopter that was shot down with its crew, every plane hit with a missile: brrrring, brrrring, on the great cash register in the homeland bank. It was all profit. It would have to be replaced. It was the perfect form of fantastically expensive and forced consumption, paid for by taxes.

the Vagos Motorcycle Club, an outlaw biker gang composed mostly of ex-military personnel, known as “violent predators” and dubbed the “largest urban terrorist” organization in the United States by San Bernardino County DA Michael A. Ramos. Intelligence sources warned that the Vagos, known as “the Green Nation,” posed an “extreme threat” to law enforcement.

Firemen, police officers, professional athletes and military service personnel are all trained with this in mind, they are taught to direct their energy, to use stress constructively.

Half of all active-duty military personnel are now stationed in only five states: California, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia.[7] Partly as a consequence of these policies, over the last few decades the military has become more southern, less urban, and more politically conservative than American society as a whole.

Civil-military relations in modern America are characterized more by paradox than by consistency: ordinary Americans support the military more than ever but know less about it than ever. In Washington, senior government policymakers simultaneously overestimate the military’s capabilities and mistrust the military leadership. The US military is widely viewed as the strongest military in the history of the world, but military leaders view conventional military tools as less and less useful for dealing with the complex security threats we face today. Meanwhile, although the military itself is more professional than ever, its internal structures—from recruiting, training, and education to personnel policies—lag badly behind those in most civilian workplaces, making it difficult for the military to change from within. These paradoxes both reflect and contribute to an underlying conundrum. In today’s world, where security challenges increasingly stem from nonstate actors, the cyber domain, the diffuse effects of climate change, and similar nontraditional sources, it is growing ever more difficult to clearly define the US military’s role and mission. We no longer have a coherent basis for distinguishing between war and “not war,” or between military force and other forms of coercion and manipulation. In such a context, we no longer know what kind of military we need, or how to draw sensible lines between civilian and military tasks and roles.

The current all-or-nothing approach to military careers does not serve the nation well. It keeps talented people out of the military and makes it risky or impossible for military personnel to branch out and then return without career penalties.

Of the 3.4 million people who served in the Soviet Armed Forces in 1991, almost 1.2 million were storage depot personnel.

The recklessness of the governments of two terrestrial countries has been obvious, when they have ordered their combat pilots to attack our space and scout ships, as soon as they are detected on their radar. This is highly dangerous for the crew members of your airplanes, because if they approach our gravitational field, their engines and controls become inoperative. In this way, several have lost their lives . . . They do not seem to understand that our orders are clear, not to harm their craft. Otherwise, at least 50 of their planes would have been destroyed. We are aware that many high-ranking military personnel and scientists have been silenced under the pretense of endangering the security of their countries, if public statements were to be made. This is another serious mistake of those governments. If we had any ambition or desire to conquer this planet, we would have done it 300 years ago, when the population could not have opposed any resistance. Even now, it would not be difficult to do. This phase is alternative: we shall continue making appearances, landings, contacts, all over the world, more and more frequently, as planned. You will be responsible for the education of the people in the different countries . . . using all means available. This is a difficult task, because you will be left to your own means [and] you will have against you those who do not take you seriously, and the dark machinations of the great established powers on your planet, hampering, creating doubts, and attacking you as promoters of this knowledge . . . After many years of observation and analysis of your world . . . the conclusion was that humankind, with few exceptions, were a barbarian horde . . . from the deepest levels of their spirit, and utterly incorrigible. Nevertheless, because of the merit of the few, [we are giving] direct help to many men, instructing them. It requires in many cases their evacuation from this planet, to a special place where they will be provided with a new conscience, to be transmitted afterwards to their fellow men . . . The disappearances of such people from Earth have already begun . . . This procedure holds the key to the future of your planet.

The Secrets of Skunk: Part Two At the Lockheed skunk works, Kelly Johnson ran a tight ship. He loved efficiency. He had a motto—“be quick, be quiet, and be on time”—and a set of rules.6 And while we are parsing the deep secrets of skunk, it’s to “Kelly’s rules” we must now turn. Wall the skunk works off from the rest of the corporate bureaucracy—that’s what you learn if you boil Johnson’s rules down to their essence. Out of his fourteen rules, four pertain solely to military projects and can thus be excluded from this discussion. Three are ways to increase rapid iteration (a topic we’ll come back to in a moment), but the remaining seven are all ways to enforce isolation. Rule 3, for example: “The number of people with any connection to the project should be restricted in an almost vicious manner.” Rule 13 is more of the same: “Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by appropriate security measures.” Isolation, then, according to Johnson, is the most important key to success in a skunk works. The reasoning here is twofold. There’s the obvious need for military secrecy, but more important is the fact that isolation stimulates risk taking, encouraging ideas weird and wild and acting as a counterforce to organizational inertia. Organizational inertia is the notion that once any company achieves success, its desire to develop and champion radical new technologies and directions is often tempered by the much stronger desire not to disrupt existing markets and lose their paychecks. Organizational inertia is fear of failure writ large, the reason Kodak didn’t recognize the brilliance of the digital camera, IBM initially dismissed the personal computer, and America Online (AOL) is, well, barely online. But what is true for a corporation is also true for the entrepreneur. Just as the successful skunk works isolates the innovation team from the greater organization, successful entrepreneurs need a buffer between themselves and the rest of society. As Burt Rutan, winner of the Ansari XPRIZE, once taught me: “The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.” Trying out crazy ideas means bucking expert opinion and taking big risks. It means not being afraid to fail. Because you will fail. The road to bold is paved with failure, and this means having a strategy in place to handle risk and learn from mistakes is critical. In a talk given at re:Invent 2012, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos7 explains it like this: “Many people misperceive what good entrepreneurs do. Good entrepreneurs don’t like risk. They seek to reduce risk. Starting a company is already risky . . . [so] you systematically eliminate risk in those early days.

We [the military personnel here] serve the flag. The trade we all follow is the give and take of death. It is for that purpose that the American people maintain us. Any one of us who believes he has a job like any other, for which he draws a money wage, is a thief of the food he eats and a trespasser of the bunk in which he lies down to sleep.

now the Jewish dissident groups had had enough of the British. A recent Polish immigrant named Menachem Begin, the new leader of the right-wing dissident Irgun militia, decided to take decisive action. Slight of stature and bespectacled, Begin was hardly an imposing figure. British intelligence described him as a “hump-backed, hawk-nosed former law student with thick horn-rimmed glasses and bad teeth.” But Begin saw himself as a great military leader, the heir to Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Revisionist legacy. Begin called for a revolt against the British, declaring, “War to the end!” and “There will be no retreat. Freedom—or death!”9 The Haganah had attacked British installations but had tried to avoid causing casualties. Begin felt obligated to no such restrictions. He ordered attacks against British personnel, with devastating consequences.

Quoting page 150-151: Political camouflage, needed by legislators eager to please civil rights and minority organizations while avoiding punishment by voters for supporting racial quotas, was provided by the bureaucratic obscurity of the government’s procurement process. Voters did not understand the complexities of government contracting and agency regulation. … The weaknesses of minority set-asides were chiefly two. First, they were indubitably racial and ethnic quotas, and hence were politically controversial. As government benefits tied to ancestry, they violated the classic liberal creed that Americans possessed equal individual rights. … Nonminority contractors were barred by their ancestry or their skin color from even bidding on contracts paid for by taxpayer dollars, including their own. Second, and less obviously, set-aside programs produced a common set of flaws in implementation. The most severe problem was the concentration of set-aside contracts on a few successful firms. Agency officials, needing to spend a large amount of money on minority procurement contractors every fiscal year, found very few minority contractors able to do the job. Four-fifths of all certified minority firms had no employees, their personnel roster consisting solely of the owner of the enterprise. As a consequence, agency set-aside contracts were typically concentrated on only a few firms large enough and sufficiently experienced to meet the terms of the contracts, providing constructing, street paving, computer services, military uniforms, or other goods and services. In 1990, for example, only fifty firms, representing less than 2 percent of the certified minority firms in the 8(a) program, accounted for 40 percent of the $4 billion awarded. … such firms never seemed to “graduate” from the set-aside program, weaned from the incubator and ready to compete in the normal marketplace of competitive government contracting. … Almost all the contracts were awarded on a no-bid or “sole source” basis; in fiscal 1991, for example, only 1.9 percent of the 4,576 contracts in the 8(a) program were awarded on a competitive basis.

As Marc Mauer has observed, “The more than 700,000 prison and jail guards, administrators, service workers, and other personnel represent a potentially powerful political opposition to any scaling-down of the system. One need only recall the fierce opposition to the closing of military bases in recent years to see how these forces will function over time.

mark” will be utilized to identify military personnel loyal to the Anti-Christ. I believe this because of the fact that this word has military associations, and I also believe the military personnel will be the first

all national armies by a UN military force, is available online today in “Department of State Publication 7277,” after being “unavailable” for decades due to its sensitive nature. Bowing to Rostow’s suggestion of a unilateral American disarmament, Kennedy in 1961 signed Public Law #87-297, calling for the elimination of US national forces and further declaring that “no one may possess a firearm or lethal weapon except police or military personnel.” During the following administrations, this law has been updated 18 times and is still active and “in transition,” according to ex-President George W. Bush and Admiral William Crowe. Its companion document, Publication 7277, released in 1962, describes a two-phase operation reducing the US armed forces to 2.1 million while those of China and the Soviet Union do the same.

Ones make top-notch lawyers, judges, politicians, military personnel, law enforcement officers and, of course, teachers.

Why is the Defense Science Board so focused on pushing robotic warfare on the Pentagon? Why force military personnel to learn to “trust” robots and to rely on autonomous robots in future warfare? Why is the erasure of fear a federal investment? The answer to it all, to every question in this book, lies at the heart of the military-industrial complex.

WHERE WAS THE U.S. government in all of this? Many historians and other commentators have concluded that Washington had no direct involvement in the coup, though of course one can find dissenters to this view. Ambassador Davis writes in his memoir, “I did not engage in coup plotting and am unaware of any of my U.S. colleagues having done so, including the personnel of the CIA station, the attaché offices, and the Military Advisory Group.” Davis even adds: “I did not hope for Allende’s downfall.” The CIA’s own report, released in 2000, says “there was no support for instigating a coup.” The Church committee declared categorically that it “found no evidence” that the United States was directly involved. Its conclusion jibes with Kissinger’s own statement in his memoirs that “our government had nothing to do with planning [Allende’s] overthrow and no involvement with the plotters.” Accusations to the contrary, he insisted, show “the power of political mythology.” Obviously,

Fascist regimes set out to make the new man and the new woman (each in his or her proper sphere). It was the challenging task of fascist educational systems to manufacture “new” men and women who were simultaneously fighters and obedient subjects. Educational systems in liberal states, alongside their mission to help individuals realize their intellectual potential, were already committed to shaping citizens. Fascist states were able to use existing educational personnel and structures with only a shift of emphasis toward sports and physical and military training. Some of the schools’ traditional functions were absorbed, to be sure, by party parallel organizations like the obligatory youth movements. All children in fascist states were supposed to be enrolled automatically in party organizations that structured their lives from childhood through university. Close to 70 percent of Italians aged six to twenty-one in the northern cities of Turin, Genoa, and Milan belonged to Fascist youth organizations, though the proportion was much lower in the undeveloped south. Hitler was even more determined to take young Germans away from their traditional socializers—parents, schoolteachers, churche —and their traditional spontaneous amusements. “These boys,” he told the Reichstag on December 4, 1938, “join our organization at the age of ten and get a breath of fresh air for the first time; then, four years later, they move from the Jungvolk to the Hitler Youth and there we keep them for another four years. And then we are even less prepared to give them back into the hands of those who create our class and status barriers, rather we take them immediately into the Party, into the Labor Front, into the SA or the SS . . . and so on.”117 Between the end of 1932 and the beginning of 1939, the Hitlerjugend expanded its share of the ten-to-eighteen age group from 1 percent to 87 percent.118 Once out in the world, the citizens of a fascist state found the regime watching over their leisure-time activities as well: the Dopolavoro in Italy and the Kraft durch Freude in Germany.

Tivoli Gardens and all—especially the port—influenced by Coke’s network), led to more than five hundred arrests, displaced thousands of local inhabitants, killed at least seventy-three civilians and six police and military personnel, and injured many more.

Trump was worried about the possibility of Russian casualties in Syria, given Russia’s extensive military presence there, which had climbed dramatically during the Obama years. This was a legitimate concern, and one we addressed by having the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joe Dunford, call his Russian counterpart, Valery Gerasimov, to assure him that whatever action we decided to take, it would not be targeted at Russian personnel or assets.16 The Dunford-Gerasimov channel had been and remained a critical asset for both countries over time, in many instances far more suitable than conventional diplomatic communications to ensure Washington and Moscow both clearly understood their respective interests and intentions.

I have only written what I have experienced, what I saw, and what I learned firsthand. I have tried not to exaggerate, not to understate. I have tried to be as fair as possible, to the US government, to my brothers, and to myself. I don’t expect people who don’t know me to believe me, but I expect them at least, to give me the benefit of the doubt. And if Americans are willing to stand for what they believe in, I also expect public opinion to compel the US government to open a torture and war crimes investigation. I am more than confident that I can prove every single thing I have written in this book if I am ever given the opportunity to call witnesses in a proper judicial procedure, and if military personnel are not given the advantage of straightening their lies and destroying evidence against them.

There was, in the American War for Independence, no conclusive victory comparable to Waterloo, no ineluctable 'turning point' comparable to Gettysburg. It seems almost as if everyone simply got tired, became bored, lost interest, decided to pack up and go home ... In fact, Britain did not lose the war in North America for military reasons at all. The war was lost because of other, entirely different factors. It was a deeply unpopular war, much as the war fought in Vietnam by the United States two centuries later was to be. It was unpopular with the British public, with most of the British government, with virtually all the British personnel directly involved — soldiers, officers and commanders. Clinton and Cornwallis both fought under duress, and with extreme reluctance. Howe was even more adamant, repeatedly expressing his anger, his unhappiness and his frustration about the command with which he had been saddled. His brother, Admiral Howe, felt the same way. The colonists, he declared, were 'the most oppressed and distressed people on earth.

Nuclear weapons have only been used twice, both times in the war against Japan. In each case it was used by the United States during World War II. The first was used on August 6, 1945, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima and the second was dropped three days later over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. The two bombs resulted in the deaths of nearly a quarter million people! Recently I have heard it said that since we have the second largest arsenal of nuclear bombs, we should use them to teach North Korea a lesson and reduce tensions. Perhaps we are the ones that need to learn a lesson, so let me start by saying that since these first two bombs that have been used in anger, over two thousand tests have been conducted and that it was Russia that tested the largest bomb ever detonated. On 30 October 1961, Russia which was then the Soviet Union, detonated what was called the Tsar Bomb, a hydrogen bomb with a yield of 50 megatons which is more than 3,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Are we and our leaders insane? It is only the “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” of which we are a member that can reduce the spread and possible the use of nuclear weapons. Now with North Korea being a player, its effectiveness has been questioned and we are on the brink of engaging in a contest that threatens to kill 2,000,000 people in the first day. Many of these people are American military personnel and their families stationed in in Seoul, South Korea. Following any initiative on our part, including the taunts we are making, all bets will be off and there is the possibility that other countries will see the United States as the enemy that has to be stopped!

The appearance of precision and order are so important to military commanders because they are generally idiots who couldn’t plan a decent cocktail party, especially the bureaucrats who float to the top of the Officer Personnel Management System. They require the appearance of precision and order because their operations, this one being emblematic, are goat fucks.

What is the life of one person worth? Although the Supreme leader Kim Jong-un is not suicidal, life to him is relatively cheap, after all he had his half-brother murdered. The countries population of almost 25 million people is harshly subjugated and the military consists of 5,200,000 men and women both active and in the reserves. Although his military ranks as 25th of the worlds military powers, it is the development of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems that makes Kim Jong-un so dangerous. It is estimated that they have about a dozen nuclear devices that could most likely be delivered as far as Japan. Of course their future targets, including the United States are more ambitious. In contrast to their troop strength, the United States has 1,400,000 personnel under arms, South Korea has only 624,465 and China has 2,333,000 personnel. Our advantage is primarily technical, however regardless of our superiority in battlefield technology, oil which they get from China, remains the lifeblood of their supporting economy and army. North Korea has threatened to fire missiles at the U. S. military bases in Okinawa and Guam. The reality of a war is that we would most likely win such a conflict but at a very high cost. The biggest losers of a war on the Korean Peninsula would be South Korea, North Korea and the United States in that order. If there were to be a winner it would be Russia. What are we thinking? Perhaps we should come up with a better strategy.

The danger facing the agency today is irrelevance to national security. In 2003, when the American military in Iraq found that its greatest threat was not from tanks and missiles but from roadside bombs, and the Pentagon did not, as it once did, turn to DARPA, an agency stacked with top-notch technical personnel and decades of experience in bomb detection. Instead, it created an entirely new organization that was largely bereft of the type of science and technology expertise long resident in DARPA.What followed is hardly surprising: billions of dollars were spent, and yet casualties from bombs continued to increase. Today, the agency's past investments populate the battlefield: The Predator, the descendant of Amber, has enabled the United States to conduct push-button warfare from afar, killing enemies from the comfort of air-conditioned trailers in the United States.

The burgeoning government sales not only provided profits for the chip makers but also conferred respectability. “From a marketing standpoint, Apollo and the Minuteman were ideal customers,” Kilby said. “When they decided that they could use these solid circuits, that had quite an impact on a lot of people who bought electronic equipment. Both of those projects were recognized as outstanding engineering operations, and if the integrated circuit was good enough for them, well, that meant it was good enough for a lot of other people.” One of the major pastimes among professional economists is an apparently endless debate as to whether military-funded research helps or hurts the civilian economy. As a general matter, there seem to be enough arguments on both sides to keep the debaters fruitfully occupied for years to come. In the specific case of the integrated circuit, however, there is no doubt that the Pentagon’s money produced real benefits for the civilian electronics business—and for civilian consumers. Unlike armored personnel carriers or nuclear cannon or zero-gravity food tubes, the electronic logic gates, radios, etc., that space and military programs use are fairly easily converted to earthbound civilian applications. The first chip sold for the commercial market—used in a Zenith hearing aid that went on sale in 1964—was the same integrated amplifier circuit used in the IMP satellite.

The Soviet Union suffered 65 percent of all Allied military deaths, China 23 percent, Yugoslavia 3 percent, the United States and Britain 2 percent each, France and Poland 1 percent each. About 8 percent of all Germans died, compared with 2 percent of Chinese, 3.44 percent of Dutch people, 6.67 percent of Yugoslavs, 4 percent of Greeks, 1.35 percent of French, 3.78 percent of Japanese, 0.94 percent of British and 0.32 percent of Americans. Within the armed forces, 30.9 percent of Germans conscripted into the Wehrmacht died, 17.35 percent of the Luftwaffe (including paratroopers and ground personnel), 34.9 percent of the Waffen SS. Some 24.2 percent of Japanese soldiers were killed, and 19.7 percent of naval personnel. Japanese formations committed against the Americans and British in 1944–45 lost far more heavily—the overall statistics are distorted by the fact that throughout the war a million of Hirohito’s soldiers remained in China, where they suffered relatively modest losses. One Russian soldier in four died, against one in twenty British Commonwealth

One of the biggest frustrations for all military personnel deployed anywhere involving a flight are the movers. Sure, they have a job to do, but it’s the attitude of many of them that pisses people off.

An equivalent set of attitudes could be seen all through the Magic Resistance as it started its campaign to use magic to unseat the Trump administration. Perhaps the clearest expression of that self-defeating approach was the insistence on the part of the movement’s public figureheads that three of the core rules of magical practice didn’t apply to them. Every competently trained mage knows that effective magic requires unity of intention. Every competently trained mage knows that effective magic requires what military personnel like to call OPSEC; for the rest of us, that’s operational security, better known as keeping your mouth shut. Every competently trained mage also knows that it’s much more effective to build your side up than to tear the other side down. The Magic Resistance did none of these things. What’s more, when these issues came up for discussion—and they did, all over the ends of the internet where occultists talk—leading figures of the Magic Resistance insisted angrily that neither of these three rules were valid and their magic was certain to triumph anyway.

Years after the war started, the U.S. military still had almost no uniformed personnel who could speak Dari or Pashto fluently. Few troops possessed even a remote grasp of Afghanistan’s history, its religious customs or tribal dynamics.

The fourth and fifth laws, respectively: ‘Jews are normally subject to a 10 p.m. curfew’ and ‘Jews are allowed six years elementary schooling only.’ The remaining laws, in sequence: ‘Jewish houses in the town of Kamishli are to be marked in red’; ‘Jews are barred from jobs in the public service, public institutions and banks’; ‘Government officials and military personnel are forbidden to buy in Jewish shops’; ‘Foreigners may not visit the Jewish quarters

mysterious illness dubbed “Gulf War Syndrome” plagued military personnel. Scores of soldiers were falling ill with a plethora of symptoms, the most common being gastrointestinal distress, fibromyalgia, and extreme, chronic fatigue. Years later, researchers would also observe what appeared to be a trend in birth defects in children of Gulf War veterans. The source of this illness, which has been devastating for those impacted and their families, remains somewhat of a mystery. Some suspect the use of chemical or biological weapons

But the unique position of Kashmir was not limited to the terms of its Constitution. Kashmir had become the bivouac of a vast assembly of Indian Military and Air Force personnel, who have now for nearly twenty years constantly and at most street corners stood guard against possible second thoughts by the legislatures and the Government of Kashmir on the integration of the State with the Indian Union. Democracy in Kashmir is thus underlined at all times in form and substance by the arms of the Indian army.

Radio messages report rampant rumors of Khmer Rouge attacks. There is a curfew imposed at dusk. Every corner along the main road is occupied by tanks and armored personnel carriers, soldiers everywhere. The road to Vietnam is crawling with military, and everyone is nervous. But rather than being afraid to go outside, I find it thrilling. I’ve stepped into a TV show and any misadventure can be undone with a flick of the remote.

Fear changed everyone and everything, and yet, as always, life went on. Hour by hour, day by day, while politicians and military personnel were looking for bombs and terrorists, and while the Justice Department was tearing down Enron's papery walls, families went on with their ordinary lives.

By the maker, Rezkin! I've never heard of anything so sadly romantic! You commandeered military personnel, a ship, and crew, and manipulated the lives of a baron and the heirs of four high noble houses for months during the King's Tournament just to ensure the happiness of a woman in the event you do NOT get to marry her?

if there really is no way you can win, you never say it out loud. You assess why, change strategy, adjust tactics, and keep fighting and pushing till either you’ve gotten a better outcome or you’ve died. Either way, you never quit when your country needs you to succeed. As Team 5 was shutting down the workup and loading up its gear, our task unit’s leadership flew to Ramadi to do what we call a predeployment site survey. Lieutenant Commander Thomas went, and so did both of our platoon officers in charge. It was quite an adventure. They were shot at every day. They were hit by IEDs. When they came home, Lieutenant Commander Thomas got us together in the briefing room and laid out the details. The general reaction from the team was, “Get ready, kids. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.” I remember sitting around the team room talking about it. Morgan had a big smile on his face. Elliott Miller, too, all 240 pounds of him, looked happy. Even Mr. Fantastic seemed at peace and relaxed, in that sober, senior chief way. We turned over in our minds the hard realities of the city. Only a couple weeks from now we would be calling Ramadi home. For six or seven months we’d be living in a hornet’s nest, picking up where Team 3 had left off. It was time for us to roll. In late September, Al Qaeda’s barbaric way of dealing with the local population was stirring some of Iraq’s Sunni tribal leaders to come over to our side. (Stuff like punishing cigarette smokers by cutting off their fingers—can you blame locals for wanting those crazies gone?) Standing up for their own people posed a serious risk, but it was easier to justify when you had five thousand American military personnel backing you up. That’ll boost your courage, for sure. We were putting that vise grip on that city, infiltrating it, and setting up shop, block by block, house by house, inch by inch. On September 29, a Team 3 platoon set out on foot from a combat outpost named Eagle’s Nest on the final operation of their six-month deployment. Located in the dangerous Ma’laab district, it wasn’t much more than a perimeter of concrete walls and concertina wire bundling up a block of residential homes. COP Eagle’s